The evaluation of urinary signs and symptoms in medieval medicine

Abstract

Medieval medicine established the basis of western sanitary knowledge. In an early period, the medical model was monastic and based mainly on botany. In High Middle Age (1000–1300 AD) classical Greek, Roman and Arabic sources were rescued by manuscript copiers, compilers and translators, especially in the Medical School of Salerno and in Toledo. The Arab and Hebrew knowledge was fundamental for this information recovery, that promoted the creation of the first medical universities in Europe (Montpelier, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca) that spread the medical knowledge in Late Middle Ages. A non-systematic review is undertaken to analyze how urinary signs and symptoms were evaluated in medieval medicine, with emphasis in uroscopy and in the description in medical treatises of urinary symptoms; including incontinence, dysuria and retention, and their remedies in the form of oils, syrups and electuaries to restore the humoral balance

Keywords

• Uroscopy
• Incontinence
• Dysuria
• Hematuria
• Medieval medicine